On balance I don't think it was a very good idea for the pope to have waded into the equalities debate. It's not that he doesn't have the right to do so. The idea that a global spiritual leader should be gagged by geography is plainly ludicrous. And my point has nothing to do with whether his sentiments were right or wrong.

It's just that his contribution clouded his own argument. As the African proverb says, "I point you to the moon and all you see is my finger."

With the background noise of Catholic adoptions, and the ever-rumbling tensions between traditional faith and arguments about human sexuality, any pronouncement from a conservative pontiff was bound to seem like a pre-emptive strike for his forthcoming visit to the UK. It meant that the debate got stuck in the symptomatic arguments about morality rather than the more substantial issues of how secularisation deals with the persistence of a God who makes moral demands on public life.

In a diverse society the mechanics of equality are supposed to be problematical. Religious people in general and Christians in particular have to come to terms with the fact that we are all living in a real democracy – not a theocratic state.

Faced with the challenges to our status and privileged positions, Christian faith appears to be hyperventilating under the pressure. Long ago both Archbishop William Temple and TS Eliot saw clearly that political leaders had an obligation not merely to follow Christian scruples but to reflect a wider consensus.

So in a post-Christian nation, laced with latent Christian values and hosting many other noble faiths, British society faces a genuine dilemma: what on earth do we do with "gods" who refuse to be domesticated and who wander into the public square? How do we honour both religious convictions as well as a secular version of diversity?

We simply cannot afford to allow the equality debate to be about "gays versus Christians" in the workplace. It should lead us to wrestle with critical questions about the mutual accommodation between equal citizens with different beliefs. It is to explore Professor Francesca Klug's question of whether "rights and righteousness" have a shared ancestry or act as "alternative potential protagonists".

Faith communities simply have to realise that we have a real communication problem with our culture: because what we genuinely regard as legitimate theological debates about women in leadership or transsexuals as vicars are heard as unambiguous political debates about gender and sexuality when it reaches our newspapers. It turns out we are still short of translators.

People like me described as "practising Christians" should never be allowed to perpetrate prejudice, or injustice in the name of religion. Faith should never be allowed to stand above the democratic process and claim exemption from a fair society on theological grounds. But we should have a place within society as fellow citizens with a different point of view.

We must be protected from religious bigotry. But it is profoundly undemocratic to oblige any community to employ someone whose views are either directly opposed to, or destructive of their fundamental and defining convictions and it runs counter to the spirit of our human rights which safeguards the freedom of worship and convictions. And this must be so because religious institutions are by definition ideologically determined.

Not all faith communities are married to the old religious hegemonies. Many of us know that we must lose control in order to gain respect. But what we fear is a secular intolerance which is committed to expunging faith so thoroughly from public life that it is no longer able to contribute effectively to the common good.

That's not just anti-religious; it's an act of social vandalism.

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